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CRIME: Self Defense Against The 'Knockout Game'

There’s been a lot of hoopla in the news about the “knockout game” and how horrible it is. Fred asked me on my Facebook Page for some tips on how to defend against it and I thought it could make for an interesting post. So here goes.

First, a couple of points about the knockout game itself and then I’ll get to the self-defense part. I’ll state upfront that some of you will probably not like what I have to say. I understand why that might be so, but I don’t see the point in watering down what I believe is accurate information to please everybody’s world view. It’s not possible to to cater to everyone’s feelings, nor should it be. Bear in mind that this is also just my opinion, I could be wrong. That said, before you dismiss this article wholesale, think about the consequences for you and your family should you be on the receiving end of this knockout game. Imagine it’s your butt on the line. With that as a given, what would be your solution?

This caveat is now out of the way, so let’s start.

WHAT IS THE KNOCKOUT GAME?
Here are the points I wanted to make first:

Nil novi sub sole. The knockout game isn’t new, not by a long shot. Here in Europe, they called it “happy slapping” and it’s been going on for years. It usually hits in waves and then simmers before coming back again. The same goes for the US and other countries. For some reason it’s all over the news again now, but it’s been going for ages. It used to be a street gang initiation rite: you had to KO/beat-up or even kill a random person to get in. Sometimes the thing they did was slashing some stranger in the face with a knife. Other times it was just a slap across the face. The details change but the essence stays the same: an unprovoked attack on an innocent passerby.

Youtube or it didn’t happen! The last few years, the trend was to make a video of the attack and then share it on Youtube or Facebook. This mainly started when cellphones got to the point where the quality of the videos you make with them was getting good enough. Now, almost every cellphone has a camera more than capable of capturing such an attack. For whatever reason makes sense to them, the idiots who play that knockout game often put such videos online for all to see. I’ve seen lots of them where they comment, cheer, laugh and egg each other on. There’s stupid and then there’s stupid. By doing so, they admit to committing a crime/being an accomplice to one and provide the DA with evidence for when he drags them into court (which is fortunately increasingly the case.) It’s stupid when a guy like Renzo Gracie does that, it’s just as stupid when some 18-year old punk kid does it.

You see it in all layers of society. Right now, there’s a lot of push to blame young black men for this trend. For sure, it’s certainly a factor in that group of society. But it happens just as well with rich white kids. So don’t dismiss a group of white kids when they walk up to you, it would be a mistake.

Why do they do it? The pundits on the news give all sorts of reasons: those kids are bored, don’t know any better, it’s the fault of violent video games and movies, the economic crisis, global warming (just keeping you on your toes…). Personally, I see bad parenting and a lack of knowledge about violence and its consequences as the root cause. But that’s just me and my pet peeve. The thing about senseless/random violence is that it doesn’t make much sense. Trying to find a reason for it is usually fruitless.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, what does the knockout game look like?
Here you go:

VIDEO at the link

These are just a handful of examples of the knockout game, there are many more, with tons of variations. Sometimes the assault is continuous, other times it’s just one punch. Sometimes it’s just one guy attacking, other times it’s a group. Depending on where in the world you live, the specifics of the variations will differ, so do your research.

SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST THE KNOCKOUT GAME
How can you defend yourself against people playing the knockout game? In many ways, it’s not that different from any other self-defense situation (though there are some crucial differences) and as such, there is one key concept to focus on:

Awareness.
If you’re daydreaming while you’re walking along the sidewalk, chances are you’ll never see what hits you, just like the schoolteacher in the video. So first and foremost, you need to be aware of your surroundings. This doesn’t mean you need to be paranoid and imagine ninja-thugs on every street corner. It means you have to be alert as to who is around you at all times. This has two distinct advantages:

It buys you time to act. If you don’t even notice the guy walking up to you, forget being able to do something about it. There won’t be enough time for any decisive action. But if you are aware of the guy and alert to his movements, you have a chance. It might not be a great one, but it’s more than what you have when you’re in your own world, bobbing your head while listing to the beats on your iPhone…

It sends a message. Like all predators, these kids need to pick the right target to get away with it. If they don’t, they risk a beating or worse. Most of them understand this instinctively and try to make sure to pick an easy target. If they see you spotting their movements, there’s a chance they’ll skip you in favor of a more clueless potential victim. There are no guarantees but, it’s possible.

The reason why awareness is so important is that you’re facing an ambush. These kids use surprise and overwhelming force as their main tactics: they attack out of the blue and hit as hard as they can. No feeling out, no going five rounds. Just knockout blows from out of left field.

The thing about these two factors is that they work real well and are hard to defend against. As with all ambushes, your best survival strategy is to not get trapped in one. Hence, awareness.

I know this isn’t sexy or flashy and it kills the myth you see in the movies, where the hero senses an attack and blocks it with ease. But as you saw in the video, in real life it doesn’t work that way. Instead, work on your awareness skills to avoid potential attacks. In particular, don’t let anybody into your personal space when there is no reason for that person to be there. Distance is your friend…

WHAT IF YOU CAN’T AVOID THE ATTACK?
Then you have to realize you’re in a bad situation. You’re behind the curve from the beginning and odds of you catching up are not good. When that first blow lands, if you aren’t knocked out already, you’ll be dazed and confused. If you don’t train for such a scenario, it’s unlikely you’ll do well then. Which isn’t a reason to give up but you need to understand that it’s very difficult to fight well when you’re seeing stars and little birds flashing in front of your eyes. In the mean time, your attacker will not wait for you to recover, expect him to press the advantage.

The sad truth is that sometimes, there’s nothing you can do: you lose. If the attacker gets a good enough shot in before you can act, it’s probably game over for you.

If it isn’t, here are some things you might try:

Flinch/cover. However you like to call it, it’s all good, just bring up up your arms in a close, defensive position. Whether you call this a flinch response or a close guard, I don’t really care. The point is to stop the next blow from landing and buy some time to get your bearings. Sometimes, instinctively going for a clinch hold next works well. Other times, not so much. Yep, this is a wishy washy answer, but I don’t think it would be fair to state anything as an absolute. Reality would make a liar out of me…

Run. If you can, run. Live to fight another day. Again, I know this doesn’t sound all manly but don’t forget that you just took a nasty shot from an unknown attacker. His next move might be to punch you again, or he might run off to avoid a full fight. No way to tell. What is sure is that he can’t hit you if you aren’t there. So flee to safety if at all possible.

Counter-attack. One of the ways the military handles ambushes is with immediate, aggressive counter-attack. You get hit and the next fraction of a second, you are all over your attacker. In theory, this works best. In reality, it takes a truckload of training and a healthy portion of luck to make it work. So don’t expect this to work out of the box. Invest just as much training-time in the other two options, though. Even if you much prefer this one here. Again, it’s not about being cool. It’s about surviving.

I wish there was something that could give you better odds but I don’t see many other realistic options. Which is why I want to re-state the importance of awareness: once the first punch lands, you are already several steps behind. Catching up will be problematic, at best. So don’t get caught to begin with, avoid the problem by being alert.

Some advice for those youngsters…

TO THE YOUNGSTERS WHO PLAY THIS GAME…
I remember being a teenager: I knew everything and adults knew nothing. But I was also put in my place a couple of times when I messed up. The adults who took the time to talk to me then helped me avoid a lot of problems later on. So on the off chance that any of the young people who think the knockout game is cool and fun end up reading this article, some thoughts:

Actions have consequences. Learning this is the difficult part about growing up, especially as a teenager. Here’s the thing: whether you accept them or not, the consequences of your actions will be still be there. Here are a couple of them when you play the knockout game: injuring or killing a person, serving time in prison, a civil suit and a hefty fine, your parents losing their house paying for your legal fees/fines, your rap sheet disqualifying you from jobs, etc. There’s more but this alone should give you pause…

You won’t always “win”. Eventually, somebody will hit back and beat the crap out of you. Or shoot you like this guy and this woman did. Is it still funny then? If not, then don’t come crying about your unfortunate youth and other bullshit. If you take the credit when you knock somebody out, own your stupidity then too, when it blows up in your face. Again, actions have consequences.

Switch the victim. If you think it’s funny, is it still funny when somebody does it to your mother? Or to your baby sister? Or your grandmother? If not, why not? Why is it funny when it’s somebody else’s family member instead of yours? See the contradiction there?

Be a real man. You want to know if you can knock somebody out with one punch? Go take up boxing or MMA. You’ll get to punch a lot of people there…

I have no illusions any of those teens will read this at all and if they do, agree with me and change their ways. So that leaves the parents. If you have teenage kids (like I do…) teach them the right values so they don’t become bullies and assholes. But most of all, teach them what violence is really like and what price they might pay for it.

That’s it, no more preaching from me.

========================

Wim Demeere started working as a personal trainer in 1994 when this profession was still rare in his native country of Belgium. His passion for teaching and helping people improve the quality of their lives has made him a much sought after trainer both at home and across the globe. Over the years he passed on his knowledge to a wide variety of clients: CEOs of global companies, world-class athletes, best-selling authors and many different clients of all ages. Regardless of their background, his objective is always to help them achieve their goals of martial skill, athletic performance and perfect health.

In 2002 he began collaborating on several projects with his friend and mentor Mr. Loren W. Christensen. He co-wrote three books with Mr. Christensen, with several more in progress, and has written numerous articles for books and magazines. In June 2006 he completed a video shoot at Paladin Press for a series of instructional tapes and DVDs titled “Combat Sanshou.” Since then he has gone on to release more instructional material.

Martial arts background
Wim Demeere started his training in the martial arts at age 14 with the study of judo and ju jitsu with Mr. Roland Blanchaert. After a short while he switched to a traditional Chinese style called Hung Chia Pai with Mr. Jean-Louis Gonsette, a pioneer of Chinese martial arts in Europe. Mr. Gonsette’s classes were physically and mentally challenging, which inspired him to train hard both during and outside of the classes. This brutal and effective style ignited his passion for the martial arts and he began a lifelong journey of study and training.

At age 18 he began competing in full contact tournaments and specialized in Chinese free fighting competitions called “sanda.” After obtaining his first national title he moved on to the international scene and participated in several European and World championships. Throughout his career he became the Belgian national champion four times and held the bronze medal at the 1993 Wushu world championships in Malaysia. He retired from full-contact competitions in 2000 when he became national trainer for the sanda team of the Belgian Wushu Federation.

In 1997 he started his study of Practical Tai Chi Chuan with Mr. Patrick Couder and continues to do so to this day. This internal martial art complimented his experience in the external styles and became an important part of his training. Throughout the years he has studied a broad range of other fighting styles, including muay Thai, kali, pentjak silat and shoot fighting. He continues to practice and research martial arts daily in Belgium and across the globe.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Only if the law justifies the threat or use of deadly force in response to this kind of attack in your jurisdiction...

Only if you have no legal duty to retreat in your jurisdiction...

And so on.

In short - NO, IT DOESN'T NECESSARILY WORK WELL.

And it isn't a magic talisman that will keep evil at bay by its mere presence.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Sad to say, the expression "Avoid the groid" pretty well seems to cover it. I searched the phrase the other day - it's growing in use.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Only if the law justifies the threat or use of deadly force in response to this kind of attack in your jurisdiction...

Only if you have no legal duty to retreat in your jurisdiction...

And so on.

In short - NO, IT DOESN'T NECESSARILY WORK WELL.

And it isn't a magic talisman that will keep evil at bay by its mere presence.

Disobey the "law" or possibly die....not a tough choice for me. As stated earlier, stay out of the hood and make your situational awareness top priority everywhere you go. Let the clueless pay the price.

THIS IS WHAT I WAS TAUGHT IN MY LADIES SELF-DEFENSE CLASS: (It is GOOD ADVICE for men or women!)

If you see someone approaching who looks like they may be a threat, PUT YOUR HAND UP AND SHOUT: "THAT'S CLOSE ENOUGH!, GIMME 5 FEET!" as you have your other hand ready to draw on them.
"Gimme 5" is a WELL KNOWN (Jail/prison/juvie ) term among criminals and those familiar with the penal system. It is an absolute "come any closer and you will regret it!" WARNING from those in charge.

PS WATCH YOUR BACK, they like to blindside you!!

I have found that when you are reduced to "lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps" that GOD is doing most of the heavy lifting..

I agree, situational awareness is your best defense. My radar is turning all the time and I'm aware of my suroundings. I see people walking all the time that are in their own little world and don't have a clue what is going on around them. They are targets.

Might consider a bang stick like divers use. A two piece pipe or short barrel about 5" with a 12 g shotgun shell that is banged into a shark or attacking gangster. As the stick is slammed into an attacker the inner pipes firing pin hits the shell primer and with a muffled shot delivers a 1.5 ounce slug at low velocity, quiet but deadly. pull apart to reload or ditch after wiping it down good Easy to build with no way to trace it to any one. Disguise as a folded up umbrella

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

This black man sez White folks start your own game "shootout". Guy totally promotes shooting the niggers playing this game. Long vid with plenty of 4, 5, and seven letter words but he says it all. NSFW

Miller spent a career as a corrections officer and had more fights on the job than he could count. Douglas (aka Southnarc) was an undercover narcotics cop before he retired, and did a lot of buy/bust operations all over the southeast. That got him assaulted numerous times by people who thought they'd just steal the weasly little dude's money and keep their drugs.

Both of them are IMHO the best available sources today for up close and nasty self defense training material.

Whether you look to these guys, or the Dog Brothers, or anyone you can find who is teaching reality based self defense ... LEARN THE BASICS!

Last edited by Dozdoats; 11-24-2013 at 09:54 AM.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

I suspect that a firearm would be borderline useless when someone runs up from behind you. This victim here likely never heard or saw anything- and the perp could likely run up from behind from 15 feet away in mere seconds. Pete 555 is right on

Also, never wear headphones out in public. Takes away one of your senses and makes you a better target.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion:
the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission;
which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -Ayn Rand

If you really don't feel like being beaten to death just because you are bebopping along minding your own business, then getting the hell our of Dodge is a good idea. It's a lose lose situation in places like Chicago and NY where the average guy cannot arm himself where you take your beating and risk death, or shoot the bastards in self defense, go to prison and risk death.

I think this is why Detroit is what it is today. Anyone that would typically vote Republican has long moved away, which is why it is such a corrupt Democrat strong hold.

Racism is just one of the many tools the Democrats are using to destroy this once great nation. Pure evil.

If you think "Republican" or "Democrat" matters in the context of this discussion you're delusional. Scum is scum regardless of its point of origin, and political parties are just opposing pockets on the same pair of pants.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Any religion-related posts I make are as a member and not as a forum staffer, and are not intended to promote any specific agenda or doctrinal understanding as official or unofficial board policy. Official staff actions on my part will always be clearly marked as such.

Deja moo - the feeling you've seen this bull before...

"Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

If you think "Republican" or "Democrat" matters in the context of this discussion you're delusional. Scum is scum regardless of its point of origin, and political parties are just opposing pockets on the same pair of pants.

I seriously doubt there are "people" playing the knockout game who would identify
as being a republican.

"How could it have come to this.. an army of rabble... [spit]PEASANTS[/spit]... everything WILL change -- everything HAS changed - England's "General Cornwallis" - from "The Patriot"

While it's the MMA (mixed martial arts) culture that has spread among and influenced young thugs (a la' TrayVON), that same culture is basically responsible for the beginning of the reality-based self defense movement. "Reality based" means more acceptance of Bruce Lee-like non-specific styles, a 'whatever works efficiently' approach to self defense.

Zimmerman didn't know any of those techniques, but when confronted with a MMA style wannabe thug, at least he had a pistol and was able to successfully deploy it. Under the circumstances that's pretty remarkable in itself - but look what it cost him.
=======================================

November 22, 2013
How Trayvon's Knockout Game Went Bad
By Jack Cashill

If no one else, WND, the New York Post, and now Fox News have started paying serious attention to an urban pastime known as "the knockout game" or occasionally as "polar bear hunting," a phenomenon that has caused at least seven deaths and countless serious injuries.

The "polar bear" refers to the invariably white or at least non-black victim of a hunt by a young black male, usually one of a pack of the same. The hunters tend to prey on those who seem vulnerable. This includes old people, women, children, and, most often, clueless male liberals-- like the Pittsburgh teacher seen in this video -- who have trained themselves not to "profile" young black men even when they approach with malice in their eyes.
White urbanites remain clueless because the mainstream media have chosen not to clue them in. Even when local TV stations cover the incidents, as in the Pittsburgh assault above, they are careful to avoid even hinting at a racial motive.

Said former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg, "The white liberals in the media at places that aren't covering this are saying, 'You know what? We don't want to give any ammo to those white racist conservatives out there (because they equate conservatism with racism anyway), so let's just make believe this isn't happening.' How despicable."

The media's collective failure to acknowledge the pervasiveness of the knockout game enabled them to turn would-be knockout king Trayvon Martin into a martyr and his victim, George Zimmerman, into a racist vigilante.

If he had not had an audience, Trayvon Martin would likely have made it back safely to the townhouse where he was staying in Sanford, Florida, that rainy night in February 2012. The knockout game is played for glory. Martin's audience consisted of one person, the sassy, defiant, plus-sized Rachel Jeantel who talked to Martin by phone throughout the encounter.

The story Jeantel was coached to tell at the trial and in the depositions that preceded it had little contact with reality. In addition to lying about her age and her hospitalization, both of which she was called on, Jeantel told some other obvious mistruths that the defense did not bother countering.

To account for a missing half hour of Martin's time, during which he was likely either smoking marijuana or scoping out the homes in the neighborhood, Jeantel had Martin finding shelter from the rain in "the, um, mail thing." In her initial interview with Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, however, she said Martin sought relief from the rain "under the shade" of another apartment. In fact, Zimmerman spotted Martin before he approached the community mail shed.

Jeantel also insisted that Martin put his hood up because it started raining. In fact, Martin had the hood up in the store and when he left it. Despite the obvious inconsistencies, the State used Jeantel's corrupted testimony in charging Zimmerman with murder.

There is no reason to believe anything Jeantel said about the confrontation between Martin and Zimmerman save for her spectacularly uncoached recollection of how Martin first described Zimmerman, namely as a "creepy ass cracker."

"He told me the man was looking at him," she added, "so I had to think it might have been a rapist. Might have been a rapist." When defense attorney Don West asked Jeantel whether she thought "creepy-ass cracker" was racist, Jeantel explained that the phrase meant that Trayvon viewed Zimmerman as a "pervert."

The Urban Dictionary defines "ass-cracker" as "one who engages in anal sex." It seems likely that Jeantel meant the homophobic "creepy ass-cracker" and not the racist "creepy-ass cracker." In an interview after the trial with Piers Morgan, Jeantel clarified that since Martin was himself not a homosexual, Zimmerman's actions worried him. "For every boy or every man who's not that kind of way," she said, "seeing a grown man following them, would they be creeped out?"

In sum, Martin saw Zimmerman not as the hulking vigilante the media did but as a vulnerable, possibly gay white man nearly half-a-foot smaller than he. As for Martin, although the media chose not to let the public know, he was an aspiring mixed martial artist who had recently been disciplined both at home and at school for starting fights.
Martin had four minutes to run less than a hundred yards to his townhouse. When he saw Zimmerman exit his truck, he set upon another strategy. There is no reason to believe that Jeantel tried to discourage him. In fact, she could never quite remember how it was that the final confrontation went down. Although the State chose to believe Jeantel, on this point, on all points, Zimmerman's testimony was much more credible.

"As I headed back to my vehicle the suspect emerged from the darkness and said, 'You got a problem?'" wrote Zimmerman on the night of the shooting. When Zimmerman answered "No," the suspect said, "You do now," and sucker punched him in the face. What Martin did not suspect is that this creepy ass cracker was armed. It cost him his life.

By the time of this incident, the knockout game was a well established phenomenon among young black males, especially troubled ones like Martin, the product of a broken home and a broken culture. Martin's assault on Zimmerman fit an obvious pattern.

The State of Florida, Attorney General Holder, President Barack Obama, and the entirety of the mainstream media chose not to see that pattern. "It was related to me that they just wanted an arrest," Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee told CNN after the trial. "They didn't care if it was dismissed later." Lee did not specify who the "they" was, but they could have included all the culprits named above and the mobs they inspired.

As to Zimmerman, his finances, his freedom, his mental health, and his marriage were all just collateral damage in the acquiescence to mob justice. Now, his every misstep makes national news, while the injuries and even deaths of new knockout victims go unreported. For all that, the mob remains unappeased.

Jack Cashill's new book, If I Had A Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman, is available wherever you buy books.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

I see idiot people all over including parking lots and sidewalks just jabbering on their phone with their head down most of the time.
What the hell do you have to say that can't wait until you are in more of a protected place?

I suppose a 12gauge loaded with OOBuck and inserted in the face of the perpetrators is out of the question.
Oh well, they may well eliminate you as a target when confronted with a new and difficult choice.

And as far as stupid pistol grip shotguns are concerned - forget them. If you want a pistol, GET a pistol. And learn to use it if you have to.

GO TO http://www.safeism.com/pdfs/SNContacts.pdf. This is old stuff now, but it's a good representation of what Craig Nelson (Southnarc) teaches an evolved version of as the first module of his ECQC class (ECQC = Extreme Close Quarter Concepts). Note the PRE-ASSAULT CUES he points out. Note what he has to say about situational awareness (and get those damn Ipod buds out of your ears when out in public, too!!!).

PAY ATTENTION to what's around you. You can't go into a fence and start cussing at people who get close to you in a crowd. People are GOING to be close to you in a crowded situation (which is a good reason to AVOID CROWDS). But out where people are scattered out - PAY ATTENTION. LOOK BEHIND YOU every so often. Keep your head on a swivel, watch your six, call it whatever you want, but DO IT. Use store windows and other reflective surfaces to help you. Change directions occasionally. Do unexpected things like stepping into a store if you see a group that makes you nervous. But above all PAY ATTENTION and don't be afraid to AVOID coming close to a group of black teens, especially if they are acting suspiciously. There are always clues. People you don't know paying too much attention to you is A CLUE.

Your best option is something called DE-SELECTION. Don't look like a good target for a knockout game approach. Being obvious about watching your surroundings is a good way to get de-selected. Having your head buried in your butt (talking on a cell phone, texting, listening to muzak on an Ipod) is on the other hand a good way to be a target...

Last edited by Dozdoats; 11-24-2013 at 11:32 PM.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

If I lived in a city and had to walk on the streets, I think I could come up with some passive protection pf some kind. Perhaps make a metal frame to fit down over your shoulders with a metal bar extending up each side of your head with large nails welded to it protruding outward on both sides and padded on the inside. Someone whacking you on the side of the head and getting 4 or 5 nails through his arm might break him of the habit.

AAR: SouthNarc 2.5 Day ECQC 11/09-12/2012 in High View, WV
So Mr. AAR guy is now presented with the challenge of writing an AAR for ECQC. That isn't going to be easy. Due to time constraints and the effort involved with trying to wrestle what I took away from the course into words, I'm not going to attempt to make one comprehensive AAR post. Instead, I'm going to focus on a few major themes and talk about each of them and invite the other participants in the class to add their thoughts on those topics as well.

The Coursework:

At the end of day 2.5 having been through all of the drills, all of the training evolutions, and having listened to all the lecture portions of the course I came to the conclusion that ECQC had to be one of the most well-engineered, well-choreographed, well-executed, and sophisticated courses of instruction I've ever encountered. I don't limit that to simply instruction I've encountered in firearms training. I've had the opportunity to take classes with SME's in a number of different disciplines ranging from pieces of software to psychology and even forensic science, and the ECQC program is one of the most effective means of transferring the benefit of a great deal of study and experience into a group of students within a short time span that I've ever encountered.

It's simply impossible to be conscious during this course and not walk away with several pieces of information that change your perspective on interpersonal violence. By "change" I do not merely mean mental acknowledgement of a piece of information's value, but rather the sort of knowledge that anchors deep and weaves into the fabric of your entire world view and that will influence your actions and reactions from that point forward.

The ECQC course blends easily digestible lessons in street smarts with practical instruction in combatives, the integration of weapons into combatives and street survival, and ultimately practical application of all principles taught in the class at speed under the stress of violent opposition. You're going to hear the instructor tell you what works, you're going to drill it a bit, and then you're going to try and use it against one or more opponents who are going to try their best to impose their will upon you. Somewhere in that process you're going to figure some stuff out.

If you're a gun guy, you'll figure out that there are plenty of violent problems your gun won't solve. If you've always got a plan, you'll figure out that plans typically last right up until you take the first hit. If you've got lots of aggression and no skill, you'll figure out that aggression doesn't matter much when a dude has you side-mounted and is shooting you in the crotch with your own pistol. If you've got lots of aggression and lots of skill, you'll figure out that if you don't learn how dial back the hate that things can end just as badly for you as if you were unskilled and passive. If you think that a fellow student doesn't look intimidating, you'll figure out that what he may lack in obvious physical strength he more than makes up for with incredible resolve to twist somebody into a knot and feed them their own gun and you'll probably start thinking pretty hard about how much you can really tell about a person before you've seen them under real stress.

If you showed up at this course and didn't fire a single shot or participate in a single drill, you'd still walk away having seen things that will stir questions in the places people don't like to talk about at parties.

There's a lot of random noise out there in the training world, but the ECQC coursework is like a laser beam: An intense, focused, precisely directed beam of energy that projects out of the instructor and bores into your brain until an indelible imprint has been left on your DNA.

...and you know what's really messed up about that? I'm not being dramatic. Ask the people who were there.

The Instructor:

The instructor for the course deserves special recognition on many fronts:

- For pulling together a multi-disciplinary program that rethinks much of conventional wisdom in several of those disciplines to fill a void where most fear to tread
- For honing and refining that program into a finely tuned weapon of mass instruction that literally anyone can learn from as long as they have a pulse
- For conducting that program with such a deft touch that every student regardless of prior training, skill, athletic ability, or natural talent finds themselves facing their limits without causing any permanent damage
- For structuring the program in a manner that keeps potential risks to an absolute miniumum while ensuring that people absolutely will feel pain and panic
- For promoting an environment where people are helping one another to succeed even as they are trying with all their might to violently impose their will on an opponent
- For eschewing the practice of giving the people what they want in favor of insisting on providing people with what he thinks they need
- For asking intelligent questions and trying to experimentally validate the answers rather than trying to beat people into submission with stone tablets

I've watched lots of instructors teach (or try to, in some unfortunate instances) lots of different things, but rarely do you find someone who is as effective in the goal as Craig, AKA "SouthNarc". I tend to be a student of the art of teaching, and as a result I often spot subtleties that others may miss about how a particular course or drill is structured and how it leads to the desired end state. With ECQC I could go on for hours peeling the layers of the course's presentation like an onion. From safety to stress inoculation, participating in ECQC is participating in a master class of how to imprint important information to students. This clearly wasn't his first rodeo.

At dinner after day 1.5, a student noted that one of the things he liked about Craig was that Craig took the time to explain the "why" behind what he was teaching. I told the student that the primary reason for that was Craig actually understands the "why" with more depth than most. This ain't stuff he got from a powerpoint. It's stuff that's been forged with blood and sweat over a long period with lots of data, lots of experimentation, and lots of frustration. One can disagree with some of the conclusions or some of the applications if they want, but the bottom line is that the end result holds up...and if you've got a better idea all you need to do is put on the FIST helmet, hop in ThunderDome and prove it.

Craig is a realist and has limits. He acknowledges them...but the zone where he's teaching is definitely the road less traveled and as far as I can tell nobody has a better map or is better able to guide people around it.
===============================

Realities of Criminal Assault:

Throughout ECQC the student is given a hard, realistic, experience-based look at the criminal element of our society and how they operate. The lessons boil down to describing criminal actors as opportunistic predators who attack when they have the greatest advantage and you have the least. Craig refers to the typical criminal assault paradigm as an "unequal initiative" event....and event where the bad guy is on the attack and knows it but the victim does not yet know what is happening.

The typical criminal assault has several important elements:

- an attempt to close distance with the intended victim
- an attempt to fix the intended victim in place long enough to facilitate the assault
- an attempt to blind the intended victim to encroachment/assault from one or more accomplices
- employment of some sort of ruse to confuse or task-load the intended victim long enough to facilitate the assault

With the distance closed and the victim maneuvered into a position of disadvantage and the criminal actor as close as possible, the trap is sprung with violence of action. Perhaps a demand for valuables while cramming a gun under the victim's chin. Perhaps simply beating the victim down and taking their valuables. Etc.

Craig spends considerable time explaining the importance of distance and positioning, pairing the lecture with useful physical demonstrations that in a visual and immediately understandable way highlight the difference that even a few inches of distance makes in the possibility of doing something to climb out of the "initiative deficit".

After this demonstration Craig then gives the students useful tools for Managing Unknown Contacts, all aimed at helping the student manage the encroachment of an unknown individual and helping them to recognize indicators of impending violence:

The content on Managing Unknown Contacts (frequently abbreviated as MUC) distills useful street tactics into an easily understood and easily adapted series of actions and verbalization that, when properly employed, maintains the critical distance and reveals hostile intent prior to the trap being sprung. For this reason the MUC presentation is frequently cited by students as one of the most valuable aspects of the course.

Realities of Street Survival:

Craig does not sell his instruction as a 2.5 day shortcut to being a devastating street fighter. He does not promise that after a couple of days you'll be snatching a bad man's eyeballs out of the sockets or that you'll be killing gangbangers half a dozen at a time with a 2 inch punch. Craig stated quite clearly that fighting on the street is, at best, a 50/50 proposition.

It's rare, at least in my experience, to see someone teaching a combatives course who spends his time telling students about what he labeled as his failures. Craig will not stand in front of the ECQC student and claim to have prevailed in hundreds of street encounters without a loss. Instead, he talks about narrowly surviving devastating assaults by street criminals using improvised weapons and how it caused him to rethink some of his training and the insight those experiences and considerable study has given him on the realities of violence. At no time does the ECQC student get the impression that if they just learn "the system" that they'll be invincible. They get the distinct impression that conditioning and good training sets the stage for success, but that criminal assault poses extreme danger even to a very fit, well-trained, strong, armed individual. This is further re-enforced in the training evolutions as students can have an optimal outcome in one evolution and in the next end up pinned to the ground helpless and being shot with their own weapon.

Craig does not subscribe to the idea that everybody gets a trophy. In watching the instruction and speaking with him both inside and outside the training environment, it's absolutely clear that his primary interest is in preparing the people who are looking to him for answers for the reality that is waiting for them. The instruction is not designed to convince someone that they're ready to take on King Kong and win. It is designed to be a realistic assessment of where that person is. The point isn't to breed false confidence...and yet the student almost invariably leaves ECQC with more confidence despite having been confronted with their limitations. Why? Because the students learn things about themselves. They walk away from ECQC with a more realistic understanding of the violence problem and how well equipped they are to solve it. This alone breeds confidence. Not false bravado and idiotic behavior that the simple-minded mistake for confidence, but real confidence that only comes from really knowing where you are. Typically this goes hand in hand with tangible, concrete steps to correct deficiencies. When you talk to students during breaks at ECQC the conversation is often focused on improving fitness, technical skill in grappling or striking, technical skill with firearms, better information about handling the aftermath of a use of force, better gear...

Having been provided with a realistic assessment that they cannot hide from, the students internalize the assessment and effortlessly pivot into making strategic moves to improve whatever deficiencies have been revealed. Ponder for a second the significance of that achievement: An instructor puts on a course that deliberately places students in a position where they experience pain and fear and in some extreme cases outright panic, and yet typically they leave the course with the idea that they have control over their destiny and can fix just about any problem that cropped up in the assessment.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Thus we have seen that there is a powerful resistance to killing in most healthy human beings. We have also seen that military and law enforcement organizations around the world have initiated a powerful conditioning process, through military combat training, that has enabled combatants to bypass this resistance. An extraordinarily high firing rate resulted from this process among US troops in Vietnam, British troops in the Falklands, and among modern US law enforcement officers.

But conditioning which overrides such a powerful, innate resistance has enormous potential for psychological backlash. It has been noted that every warrior society has a “purification ritual” to help the returning warrior deal with his “blood guilt” and to reassure him that what he did in combat was “good”. In primitive tribes this generally involves ritual bathing, ritual separation (which serves as a cooling-off and “group therapy” session), and a ceremony embracing the veteran back into the tribe. Modern Western rituals traditionally involve long separation while marching or sailing home, parades, monuments, and the unconditional acceptance of society and family. As was noted previously, after Vietnam this purification ritual was turned on its head, and America paid a tragic price, with anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 million cases of PTSD occurring as a result of our conduct of that war.

One vital, age old aspect of this "purification ritual", can and has been, reintroduced since Vietnam and that is the "debriefing," conducted every night around the campfire. The introduction of 24-hour combat for months on end in World War I created an environment in which it became impossible for the soldier to perpetuate this ancient, nightly ritual. Throughout the 20th century the opportunity to conduct a daily processing of combat experiences disappeared from the battlefield. The group critical incident debriefing is not a new occurrence on the battlefield. The absence of this daily debriefing is what is new, and now we are reintroducing this ancient process, with a degree of systematic, scientific expertise that has never occurred before.

Today, there is a moral, medical, and legal obligation to conduct these group debriefings. These debriefings must include all of the individuals who were involved in the critical incident, or, if that is not possible, individuals who were involved in similar incidents. Any organization that sends individuals in harms way, and especially any organization that calls upon humans to participate in the psychologically toxic realm of interpersonal aggression (which is, perhaps, the “universal human phobia”), and does not subsequently conduct a critical incident debriefing is morally, medically, and legally negligent.

Furthermore, there must be an environment wherein there are no “secrets” to be kept, since the perpetrators may well be “only as sick as their secrets.” That means, to the utmost of our ability, we create an environment of transparency and accountability in which no atrocities or criminal acts can occur, since these are the ultimate “secrets” which often cannot be confessed and must be kept at all costs. Col. Greg Belenke, a psychiatrist and head of one of the combat stress teams in the Gulf War, has definitively stated that atrocities and criminal acts are one of the surest paths to PTSD. PTSD can be thought of as “the gift that keeps on giving,” since it impacts not just the perpetrators, but also their spouses and their children in the decades to come (Belenke, 1996).

Rachel MacNair, in her research, has found that: "The item, 'There were certain things I did in the military I can't tell anybody,' was a strong indicator of the perpetration groups in just about every way I looked at it. When I compared those who were directly involved in the killing of civilians or prisoners with those who witnessed that but were not directly involved, yet did kill in other contexts (presumably more in line with traditional combat), the two items that differentiated were that one and nightmares" (R.M. MacNair, personal communication, June 15, 2000).

This means that atrocities, the intentional killing of civilians and prisoners, must be systematically rooted out from our way of war, for the price of these acts is far, far too high to let them be tolerated even to the slightest, smallest degree. This means that we enter into an era of transparency and accountability in all aspects of our law enforcement, peacekeeping, and combat operations. This also says something about that those who are called upon by their society to “go in harm’s way,” to use deadly force, and to contend with interpersonal human aggression. These individuals require psychological support just as surely as they require logistical, communications, and medical support. Thus, as our society enters into the Post-Cold War era, the fields of psychiatry and psychology have much to contribute to the continuing evolution of combat, and to the evolution of our civilization.

Ephesians 5:11 - " Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ”

Deo adjuvante non timendum - With God Helping, Nothing is to be Feared

Grossman has some worthwhile things to say about mindset and psychology. But most of his audience are what he himself describes as "sheepdogs." That is, cops and soldiers.

Are you a cop?

Are you a soldier?

Do you run around describing yourself as "a warrior?"

If so, fine - listen to Grossman.

But if you are plain old Joe Schmuck citizen (no, NOT "civilian") - what does Grossman have to say to you that's worthwhile? Some good advice about the psychological effects of exposing your kids to violence, perhaps, yes.

But beyond that, down in the weeds, there's not much in Grossman's material that's put out there for us ordinary folks, the sheep. Just the "sheepdogs."

I'm not one who cares for that whole allegorical shepherd/sheep/sheepdog/wolves structure myself. Why?

Because sheepdogs help shepherds control sheep so they can be exploited. Why is being exploited by a shepherd any better for the sheep than being exploited by wolves?

What I personally am interested in is SHEEP WITH FANGS.

Take it however you want it, otherwise..
======================================

Others have told me that I am wrong, to my face and on youtube videos. Personally I think that LTC Grossman is very correct in his descriptions of the physiological reactions to violence. However, none of that is anything new or radical. People have understood for years the "fight/flight/freeze/submit" physiological responses from watery guts to reduced blood flow through the limbs, etc. If you read Grossman to find out how your body will react to a violent encounter ahead of time I think you will come away with a better understanding of what your body will go through, even if the violent encounter ends with no actual violence.

Where Dave Grossman is wrong is in his statistical analysis of data. His claims that violent video games turn gamers into Delta Force badasses is purely laughable. Now someone who does have some data has started chipping away at the "most soldiers don't fire their guns" bullshit that Grossman picked up from S.L.A. Marshall. http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/...-engen-eng.asp

When a military historian starts picking apart a psychologists shoddy analysis, put your money on the historian.

Gentlemen and Ladies, if you want to be a better fighter, you need to go out an actually train. If you can't train yourself by all means pick up a class from John Mosby http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/ or Max Velocity http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/. I had to sign away years of my life to get my training, a few hundred bucks and some time sleeping on the dirt is a damn good bargain in comparison.

Now, is everything about "killology" BS? No. But if you've been in a fistfight you have pretty damn good idea how your body will react after a gunfight. A fight is a fight, and only the weapons change. The more intense the fight, the more intense your reactions will be. Simple as that, your body doesn't have a different stress response for war as for a fistfight. The only difference will be intensity.

Now I think Dave Grossman will come to be remembered along the same lines as Sigmund Freud, wrong about so much, but still an important figure in the early stages of a discipline. But when you think about all the harm that Freud caused when his ideas were widespread across Western culture, maybe he should occupy the same place in our memories as Karl Marx, another pioneer in a field who was wrong about nearly everything.

Last edited by Dozdoats; 11-25-2013 at 01:36 AM.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

This kind of goes along with this topic. Today after church, I stopped for lunch at O' Charley's . As I was leaving there was a fancy black car with a minority dude playing his radio loud enough to draw attention. He was parked right in front of the place which meant he was blocking where my car was parked in handicap parking .

I got in the car , buckled up, turn the ignition on and he didn't move. I waited but he still didn't move. It took about 7 minutes to finally maneuver my car out, all the time knowing the guy would have filed a law suit had I scratched his car. I wanted to get out and confront him but realized that wasn't wise. You have to choose your battles. He never did move while I was there.

It is sad to think I had just returned from church and had a nice lunch and then had to ask the Lord's forgiveness for let's just say my attitude toward that guy!

We get brought up with a certain set of expectations. We expect others in our society to share those common expectations. Problem is we now have a 'buffet society' instead of a 'melting pot' society. And a lot of people don't understand the irrational responses that can be provoked by simply assuming everyone we meet shares our societal expectations of consideration for others, good manners, etc.

Your dood with the shiny car? More than likely that wasn't just his car. It was his EGO parked there, with all that entails.

Which is what brings about a lot of the violence we see. Like that incident in the parking lot, where a simple request to a driver to slow down provoked a situation that left the requester crippled and her companion dead.

Every year Tom Givens of Rangemaster puts on a conference he calls "Polite Society." (http://commonsense-t-p.com/2013/05/2...society-match/) The name comes from the old RAH quote: "An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." (from Beyond This Horizon, 1942).

Right now, we no longer have a 'polite society.' Sad to say...

Last edited by Dozdoats; 11-25-2013 at 01:47 AM.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

THIS IS WHAT I WAS TAUGHT IN MY LADIES SELF-DEFENSE CLASS: (It is GOOD ADVICE for men or women!)

If you see someone approaching who looks like they may be a threat, PUT YOUR HAND UP AND SHOUT: "THAT'S CLOSE ENOUGH!, GIMME 5 FEET!" as you have your other hand ready to draw on them.
"Gimme 5" is a WELL KNOWN (Jail/prison/juvie ) term among criminals and those familiar with the penal system. It is an absolute "come any closer and you will regret it!" WARNING from those in charge.

PS WATCH YOUR BACK, they like to blindside you!!

I am surprised nobody commented on my post.
As i see it, it has been the ONLY post that actually offers a concrete suggestion of SOMETHING to do when ACTUALLY facing that potntial "knockout" assault while armed. Even the OP suggested nothing.
It is ALWAYS BETTER to avoid or prevent such a potential encounter if you can, (stay away from blacks, black areas and groups of black youth) which is what almost everyone said, but don't forget what i passed on to you.

I CANNOT REMEMBER IF THAT PARTICULAR BIT OF ADVICE WAS FROM MASSAD AYOOB, BUT HIS instructional videos PLAYED A MAJOR PART IN THE 16 evening classes in the handgun/self defense course for ladies that I took.

I have found that when you are reduced to "lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps" that GOD is doing most of the heavy lifting..

It's a fairly commonly taught approach in many basic SD classes, MzK. Problem with it is, if you're gonna start talking 'con' talk, you better be able to bring some apparent 'con' cred to the table with it. Just playacting won't cut it.

See the material at http://www.safeism.com/pdfs/SNContacts.pdf, please. It's old, it was posted just after Craig started teaching, and it has has evolved some since then, but MUC (Managing Unknown Contacts) as currently taught is IMHO the state of the art at this point, and is but a starting point for ECQC.
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ETA: And there's this, as well- this is what you are taking on when you start talking to thugs. VCA (used below) = "violent criminal actor"
===========

Note: The following presentation was delivered at the Rangemaster Polite Society Match and Tactical Conference on 25-27 February 2005.

1) Always interested in Gen. G. A. Custer.

a) Little Big Horn Fight

i) For thirty years after the fights the books written assumed there were no eye witnesses to the battle.
ii) What was known of the battle was the result of scene reconstruction by those sent to do the investigation of the destruction of Custer’s Command.
iii) Eventually, there were a few books written that were the product of interviews with the Indians who were there.
iv) Prejudice of the times discounted the views of the Indians of what happened and how.
v) Indians were regarded as killers with no useful input.
vi) Dehumanizing terms were used to describe Indians. They were “savages”.

2) Today, VCA are regarded in the same fashion.

a) VCA are regarded as savage killers.

i) They are dehumanized by terms used to describe them.
(1) evil
(2) other human
(3) various other less descriptive, though vile names.

ii) Their value as contributors of information about the sequence of events that lead to the killing of people is derided and disregarded.
(1) Some of this view is the product of the behavioral science approach to their actions that came out of the 60’s approach to crime prevention that saw criminals as “victims” of society.
(2) That approach attributed their conduct to their inability to participate in society.
(3) It made excuses for them and postulated they were compelled by outside forces to engage in their acts.
(4) It was an approach that substantially rejected the role of individual responsibility and personal decision making.

3) Much of what is known of killing incident today comes from the reconstruction of crime scenes.

a) This approach is valid and revealing.

i) Still, there is value to getting the input from killers to flesh out what happened, why and if there were circumstances that would have caused them to form “restraining judgments” before engaging in the attack.
ii) It also helps the Practitioner understand when to use the various techniques and tactics they learn in our serious study.

b) If we take what killers tell us about their motives and strategy we can learn to more effectively learn how to address them when they bring violence our way?

PRACTITIONERS STUDY TACTICS

4) Practitioners make investments in their study.

a) The invest money, time and energy studying and practicing techniques and tactics.
i) Little examination is made of when these techniques and tactics are likely to be used in specific forms of VCA initiated actions.

b) Today we will look at how the motives of VCA affect their strategy.
i) We will look at how motive affects their willingness to form restraining judgments when their chosen target is other than compliant to their approach.
ii) We will look at those operant motives which are likely unwilling to form restraining judgments.

c) We will look at Practitioner response models that will be useful in handling the engagement and the legal aftermath.

b) House exercises and FoF are considered “advanced” skills.
i) House exercises are predicted on a necessity to move through a hostile environment searching for aggressors who have taken a position there.
ii) Unless you are part of a specialized unit with a duty obligation, you are unlikely to use this skill set for that type mission.
iii) The value for house exercises to the Practitioner is to prepare him to read an environment quickly and adopt its parameters to his advantage. There are two occasions in which this circumstance may occur.

(1) When engaged in escape and evade actions from a hostile confrontation.
(2) When compelled through extraordinary circumstance to proceed to the aid of those for whom the Practitioner is legally and morally responsible.

iv) FoF work is to prepare the Practitioner for situational reading skills.
(1) Well designed FoF exercises allow the Practitioner to practice reading the intentions of VCA and determine the motives and strategy operant in the confrontation.
(2) The Practitioner can practice techniques designed to bring about restraining judgments in the VCA confrontation.
(3) Such scenarios allow the Practitioner to practice execution of disengagement, escape and evasion.

c) The role of House exercises and FoF is to develop “reading” skills in the Practitioner.
i) They teach the reading of the environment and the situation.
ii) They provide practice at executing the primary confrontation strategy for Practitioners.

STUDY MODELS PREPARE YOU FOR

6) Practitioner Study Models prepare the Practitioner for two types of VCA confrontations.

a) Active Incidents

i) In active incidents the VCA is operational and for the moment, is directing his killing activities at another person.
ii) That person may be someone for whom you are legally and morally responsible.
iii) You may be compelled to adopt an aggressor response to go to their aid.
iv) You become the hunter.
v) Environmental reading skills will be of value in this situation.
(a) Most training problems require you to check each room and door in the problem.
(b) The imperative is never passing by a room or door you have not checked.
(c) More realistically in this operative circumstance you will pass by portals without checking them because your mission at the moment will not allow that amount of time.
(d) You will apportion an amount of your attention to that unchecked area, monitoring it for changes in condition that require your response.
vi) A variant of this model will be circumstances where a VCA is operant in a location and you must use environmental reading skills, coupled with other techniques to effectively exit the killing venue.

b) Reactive Incidents take two forms.

i) Anticipatory Reactive.
(1) In anticipatory reactive incidents, you have time to identify the VCA aggressor and his intentions
(2) You may have time to attempt restraining judgments in him.
(a) The definition of a fight is any engagement with a VCA in which every decision is worth you life.
(b) Does not necessarily mean that blows are traded.
(c) Causing a redefinition of the circumstances as the VCA sees them such that he decides against continuing the confrontation is a higher grade of skill execution than trading blows demonstrates.
(3) You will have time to load a response technique from your repertoire of skills and execute it when required.

ii) Real-time Reactive
(1) In real-time incidents the VCA has gotten within arms reach of you and is executing his attack.
(2) You must execute a technique designed for that form of confrontation instantly.
(a) There will certainly be such occurrences.
(b) You must have techniques pre-loaded and ready for execution.

c) Current employment practices, combined with VCA strategies place VCA in first class hotels, restaurants, caterers and government employment.

i) They use the women in their lives to gather intelligence and means of access to facilities.
ii) Avoid presenting an image that will mark you.
iii) Adopt Master John Farnam’s “Stealth existence”.
iv) “Fed Faux Chic” will invite attention to you and your room.
v) Everyone engages in personal “projection models”.

UNDERSTAND VCA STRATEGY

7) Purpose is to learn a general navigation system for maneuvering through VCA confrontations.

a) This is not a lesson in applied psychology.
i) Discussion is designed to position you as an informed consumer of training.
ii) Discussion designed to allow you to assess your training regimen for useful techniques in addressing the various forms of VCA confrontations.

VCA LIFE EXPERIENCE

8) Predatory Skill Set Building

a) Predatory skill set building evolves over a lifetime.

i) Age 4, while at play he learns to out maneuver and overcome the desires of his peers. It is the center piece of his interaction. He is not cooperative at play.
ii) Age 6, he learns to use lying for its tactical advantage.
(1) It is not used as a tool to avoid embarrassment.
(2) He learns to control people by active misleading.
(3) It is first used on those who trust and acre about him the most.
(4) He learns to spot vulnerability and bewilderment.
(5) He learns to use a person’s desire to erroneously believe something despite the evidence.
(6) He realizes there are people who want to suspend reality and learns how to spot and cultivate them.
(7) He learns the first reaction to obviously conflicting signals is bewilderment and therefore he acquires time to further develop tactical superiority.
(8) He learns to use lying as a weapon.

iii) Age 8, he learns that physical coercion can be used to get his way and develops a cold-blooded use of this bullying skill as a weapon.
(1) Bully’s show-up on the playground between 2nd and 3rd grade.
iv) Age 10, he learns to use charm and courtesy to deceive, maneuver and ingratiate. He learns to use these qualities as a weapon.
v) Age 12, he selects associates with the same value system.
(1) Parents often comment that their child took a wrong course in life when they started “hanging with the wrong crowd”, at age 12-14.

b) By the time the Practitioner meets him on the street, the VCA has decades of experience using a combination of coercion, charm and deception to maneuver and manipulate.

a) While there are exceptions, this is a common street encounter motive model.
i) Willing to use violence and enjoy it.
ii) Low weapons skills.
(1) Rarely have any gun handling training.
(2) Shots fired experience often is limited to criminal incidents.

iv) Limited ammo supply.
(1) Rarely have additional ammo on them.
(2) Often the gun is not fully loaded.
(3) They are there to kill, not fight.

v) Multiple assailants raise the probability of weapons and attack.
vi) Expects to survive the encounter unscathed.
vii) Survival expectation means the VCA using this motive is susceptible to restraining judgments.
(1) You have a chance to change his actions by causing in him a re-definition of circumstance.

b) Experience is usually evident in the approach.

i) The smoother and more controlled the approach; the more experienced the VCA at that activity.
ii) Aggression level does not mean the VCA is not smooth and controlled in his approach.
iii) Highly skilled team attacking a facility would be an exception.

EXPRESSIVE

11) Hallmarks of an Expressively Motivated VCA.

a) The purpose of their act is directed violence.
i) Means there people in that venue they intend to kill.
ii) They will likely have brought multiple weapons to the killing venue.
iii) They will be of good quality and well maintained.
iv) They will likely have weapons skills.
v) They will likely have substantial additional ammunition supplies.
vi) They will often have barrier breaching capabilities.
vii) They know the killing venue and how to move to their intended targets.
viii) Often do not expect to survive the incident
(1) May expect to be killed by responders
(2) May intend to commit suicide during or at the conclusion of the incident.
ix) If they have an escape plan, it is often to move on to another killing venue.

b) Are probably not willing to form restraining judgments.
i) They are there on very emotionally driven personal business

INSTRUMENTAL/EXPRESSIVE

12) Hallmarks of an Instrumental/Expressive motivated VCA.

a) They are a mixture of the two models.
i) They redefine the circumstances through interactive interpretation model.
ii) The redefinition will likely be as a result of your actions or the actions of someone in the object group.
iii) The redefinition is to move the motive from instrumental to expressive.
(1) Usually because they feel they have been disrespected in some fashion.
(2) They are often looking for an excuse to interpret actions as expressing disrespect.
(3) Often are in the company of others when the confrontation occurs.
(4) Often intend harm as part of the confrontation.

iv) They may be susceptible to restraining judgment.
(1) Usually expect to escape their violent incidents unscathed.

KILLING MOTIVES

13) VCA killing motives by category.

a) Instrumental
i) The killing is instrumental to a gain motive operating within the VCA.
ii) Adventure
(1) The killer kills fir the simple adventurism of killing.

iii) Theft/Gain
(1) The VCA kills for theft or other gain.
(2) Theft can be any kind of financial/goods/chattel gain.
(3) Gain can be anything of value to the VCA.
(a) Could be a gain in status to themselves or within a cohort group.

iv) Sex
(1) Could be an attempt to cover a sexual assault.
(2) Sexual serial murder.

14) NOTE: Any of these could change to an Expressive motive depending on circumstance and the personality of the VCA.

a) Expressive
i) Fear
(1) Often the motive for self-defense incidents.
(a) Self-defense is the motive in 20-25% of killings even when the action is not legally justifiable.

ii) Anger
(1) Anger is just that.
(a) May be imperfect self-defense.

iii) Love
(1) Is mercy killing.

iv) Revenge

v) Honor
(1) Gang killings.

15) NOTE: Expressive motive is emotionally driven. It is the irrationality of the emotional content that drives the action. It is the reason that VCA so motivated are usually not amenable to restraining judgments.

VCA PLAN PROGRESSION

16) VCA follow a progression in their work up to the killing incident.

a) This process can take moments or months.
i) Marrying of the motive and the target.
ii) Rumination
(1) He works himself up mentally and emotionally.
iii) Fantasy
(1) He fantasizes over how he wants to do the target harm.
(2) Fantasy is not planning, but it does involve some visualization.
iv) Gathers his tools.

17) NOTE: To this point there is often a good chance the VCA will voluntarily form a self-generated restraining judgment.

i) Prepares a plan.
ii) Practices a plan.
(1) Can involve an actual visit to the to the site venue or could be a visualization of the site.
(2) He rehearses mentally how he will initiate and the Target will respond.
(3) He forms a mental tape loop.
iii) Executes the plan.
(1) The more experience he has at his technique the more committed he is to it.
(2) The more sure he is of the targets response to his initiation.
(3) You can interrupt his loop and collapse it on him.
(4) Goal should be to cause him to form a restraining judgment if possible.

PRACTITIONERS STRATEGY

18) Practitioner’s strategy is designed to guide his actions when confronting an operational VCA.

a) AJOP is the traditional model.
i) It is a design for those with a sworn duty obligation.
ii) It is a check list based system.
iii) It assumes the necessity of engagement.

b) Practitioners need a model that will address Problem 1 and Problem 2.
i) A design that does not assume engagement.
ii) A design that recognizes necessity as the only form of justification
iii) A design that provides a skeleton structure on which to hang specific actions of the VCA and the Practitioner that identify:
(1) elements that lead to a conclusion of necessity
(2) attempts to cause restraining judgments in the VCA.

(2) Avoidance, Specific
(a) Do everything possible to avoid a confrontation with a specific person.

ii) Form a restraining judgment.
(1) The approach of a VCA means he is evaluating your fitness to serve as his target.
(2) You should engage in behavior that encourages him to redefine the circumstances and form a restraining judgment about continuing to see you as a viable target.
(3) This generally, only works in instrumentally motivated VCA.
(4) Remember he may be instrumental/expressive in motivation.
(5) Remember his life long learning pattern and use conduct he will recognize.
(a) Be breath taking in your effrontery.
(b) Ask direct questions designed to give you the information you need to make decisions.
i. 1/ Are you trying to block my way?
ii. 2/ Are you armed?
iii. 3/ anything other than an immediate and direct denial should be taken as a “yes”. Perhaps a qualified “yes”, but a “yes” nonetheless.

(c) Be charming, polite and comfortable in your delivery.
(d) This puts him on notice you recognize him for what he is and are not uncomfortable with the situation.
(e) Anxiety, arrogance and hesitation embolden him.
(f) Relaxed courtesy raises his anxiety and does not give him an excuse to shift to expressive motivation.
(g) If he expresses rage at your questions, remember he is probably looking for an excuse to shift to expressive motivation.
(h) Apologize as you are moving from the area.

(6) Remember this is a negotiation using interactive interpretation.
(7) Each of you is trying to gather information about the other in real-time to decide what the next course of action will be.
(8) Each of you is trying to form a restraining judgment in the other.
(a) His purpose is to lengthen your response time so his action beats your reaction. He is trying to get you to disbelieve the available evidence.
(b) Yours is to keep your action (not reaction) time intact as you gather sufficient information to confirm his intentions. Your action is pre-loaded.

iii) Disengage
(1) Disengagement occurs simultaneously, if possible, with the restraining judgment formation technique.
(2) It is repeated at each stage from then until the action is terminated.
(3) Re-engagement by the VCA is interpreted as evidence of continued intent. It is a fundamental element of establishing necessity.
(4) Be certain your disengagement can be done in relative safety and does not expose you to more danger than you presently face.

iv) Escape
(1) Be aware of the possibility that the initiator VCA has cohorts assisting him.

v) Evade
(1) Vacate the venue.

d) Example.
i) If you engaged in general avoidance, “hunting ground” activity will not really play a role in your explanation.
ii) I was really concerned because these guys were coordinating their moves with mine.
iii) So I tried to leave the area but they moved to cut off my exit.
iv) So I got a park bench between me and them, but they kept trying to go around it.
v) So to let them know I was concerned I asked them if they were armed and if they were going to rob me.
vi) They would not answer my question directly.
vii) As they moved they clutched at their waste bands as though they were concealing something that had weight and they were concerned they would drop it.
viii) I knew it was not safe for me to run from them because there was a closed door that I would have to negotiate and it was only 25 feet away. They could easily catch me before I could get there, open the door, pass through and secure it behind me.
ix) In this example you have used ADEE and restraining judgments as your operational model and as the model to justify your actions.

EXPRESSIVE MOTIVE

19) Settling Personal Business

a) They are there to set the world right as they see it.
i) They are there to kill anyone who is part of the world that they see as needing to be set right.
ii) They are much less amenable to forming restraining judgments while operational.
iii) Restraining judgments are more likely to be formed in advance of them going operational.
iv) They regularly employ long guns at pistol ranges. Your contacts with them should take this advantage into account.

b) Disgruntled Employees and Students.

i) Weapons systems
(1) They will probably have multiple weapons.
(2) They will probably have substantial ammunition supplies and the ability to reload quickly.
(3) They will often have barrier breaching capabilities.
(4) They will have weapons experience.

ii) Motive, Expressive
(1) Are often middle-aged white males.
(2) Probably have no prior criminal history.
(3) See themselves as having been wronged.
(4) They are on a moral mission.

iii) Targeting behavior
(1) Anyone who is seen to have participated, directly or indirectly, in the wrong they perceive.

iv) Signs of problems to come.
(1) He often has exhibited strange behavior and habit patterns.
(a) May change his appearance he progresses in his plan.
(b) May become more disheveled in appearance.
(c) May show up on the day of his attack very neatly dressed.

(2) His long time behavior is that he always has an excuse for his failings. He usually blames his problems as some sort of conspiracy against him by those to whom he reports.
(3) He will regularly characterize disputes as his being wronged.
(4) He will be fixated on the wrong and ruminate about it. He will not be able to let it go.
(5) He will suggest a willingness to use violence to set things right.
(6) He expresses rage and uses it to control others.
(7) Others, especially superiors, will develop a reluctance to deal with him directly. They will often send surrogates or use official communication, such as memos.
(a) This emboldens him.
(b) He will see those people as weak and target them.
(c) This can be as remote as the secretary who types the memos.
(d) These behaviors in others should serve as part of your “awareness”.
(8) He is very ego centric.
(9) There will be a triggering event.
(a) He was passed over in a promotion.
(b) He was demoted.
(c) He was discharged.

v) Strategy
(1) You must form a restraining judgment in him before the event.
(2) Do not give him reason to assign to you participation in his delusion.
(3) Unless there is someone on scene for whom you are legally and morally responsible, do not run to the sounds of concussion.

c) Domestic Violence
i) Weapons system
(1) He will likely have a well maintained weapon that is of good quality.
(2) He will likely be familiar with weapons and have shooting experience.

ii) Motive, Expressive
(1) Probably does not have a prior criminal record.
(2) Often is, or has been, under a PFA order.
(3) He will see himself as righting a personal wrong.
(4) He will target not only his domestic partner but any one else he believes are interfering in his personal business and what is rightfully his.
(5) His violence is usually in response to maintain his perceived right of sexual exclusivity.
(6) Often a middle-aged white male.
(7) He will be enraged by being assigned a dishonorable position such as “criminal” status through a PFA filing or criminal arrest for a recent domestic assault.
(8) He sees himself as facing a complete reversal of fortune after a life-time of playing by the rules.
(9) He will have been involved in a planning stage which will include practice with his weapons.

iii) Targeting Behavior
(1) His domestic partner.
(2) Anyone who seems to him to have facilitated her separation from him.
(3) Anyone who seems to be taking her part or is interfering with his life.

iv) Signs of problems to come.

(1) Watch for attached female who do not have relationships with co-workers outside of the work place, or if they do have relationships they are clandestine.
(2) Watch for attached females who show up just in time for the work day to start and promptly leave at the end of the work day.
(3) Watch for attached females who must account for their time by taking frequent and often regular calls from their mate, indicating she is being controlled.
(4) You can not count on seeing his behavior, but you can count on seeing his.
(5) She will often show signs that she is engaging in dangerous activity, usually with the encouragement of others.
(a) love interest
(b) lawyer
(c) social engineer
(6) There is usually some form of triggering event that is interpreted as a final rejection.
(a) She will move out
(b) Papers will have been served, or a court hearing is scheduled or just occurred.
(7) He will approach his target in a determined, purposeful manner.
(8) He will likely interpret anyone, particularly male, who approaches in response to his attack as a rival and kill them.
(9) He may have already killed other family members as part of the “setting right” ritual.
(10) If he has done so, he will be operating under the influence of “hot-blood”.
(11) There may be talk of his having engaged in past, false suicide attempts.
(12) There may be talk of his having pointed guns of her in the past.
(13) There may be talk of his threatening to kill her and others she is associated with in the past.
(14) He will often kill himself as part of the killing ritual.

v) Strategy
(1) Stay away from attached women.
(2) If you attempt to intervene, understand you will be facing determined violence that is not likely to break off until his goals are met.
(3) You will be confronting someone who is experienced with weapons.

d) Disgruntled Customers and Clients.

i) Weapons systems
(1) Good quality, well maintained weapons.
(2) Likely to have multiple weapons and an abundance of ammo.
(3) Likely very familiar with weapons.
(4) Often brings long guns to the incident.

ii) Motive Expressive
(1) Probably has no prior criminal record.
(2) Feels wronged or in the midst of a reversal of fortune.
(3) Often a middle-aged white male who feels he has played by the rules throughout his life.

iii) Targeting Behavior.
(1) Anyone who is there
(2) Anyone who he assigns responsibility to for his fortune reversal/
(3) The store or office personnel.

iv) Signs of Coming Trouble.
(1) Repeated visits to the facility complaining of mistreatment.
(2) Demands to be made whole.
(3) Threats.
(4) Sees the level as loss as a threat to his being.
(5) Visible apprehension when he appears is evident in the resident personnel

v) Strategy
(1) When you see apprehension in the resident personnel over the appearance of someone who is complaining of mis-treatment, leave.

e) Mentally Ill

i) Weapons System.
(1) Could be anything. Often an implement procured at the scene.
(2) Will sometimes push targets into the path of oncoming vehicles.
ii) Motive Expressive
(1) Imagines some slight no one knows of.
(2) Responds to voices from some imaginary being.
(3) Attention getting.
(4) Saving the world.
(5) Often under the influence of some chemical substance.

iii) Targeting Behavior.
(1) Completely unpredictable.

iv) Signs of Trouble to Come.
(1) He’s nuts’
(2) Usually disheveled and unkempt in appearance.

v) Strategy
(1) Stay away from them.
(2) They may be under the influence of chemical substances and very difficult to stop.
(3) They are unlikely be able to form restraining judgments.

STREET CONFRONTATIONS

20) They are the form of attack most training revolves around.

a) Reasonable because they are statistically the most likely form of VCA attack.
i) They can also take the form of home invasions.
ii) In home invasions about 1/3 of the occurrences result in the serious injury or death of members of the household.
iii) Once home invaders take control of the scene, they are there until they decide to leave.
iv) They are most often very long nightmare experiences.
v) Be prepared to fight back from the moment the entry begins.
vi) Multiple point entries are very common.

b) Street Confrontations
i) About 25% of police involved shootings occur when the officer is off-duty.
ii) Police do not go to the types of places in their off-duty hours that they are compelled to go when on-duty.
iii) Commonly, their off-duty hours are spent in locations similar to the kinds of places ordinary citizens go every day.

c) VCA Strategy
i) VCA go to areas that are the best hunting grounds for them
ii) They look for places where they can get the best return for their efforts.
iii) They will take employment where they can gather intelligence about the best targets.
(1) They will go to up-scale hotels and restaurants and catering services.
(2) They will work at jobs that allow them access to every part of the facility, usually with keys.
(3) They have the women in their lives take similar jobs to feed them information for their criminal purposes.
iv) Their approach will be part of a negotiating process.

(1) They will use the targets movements as a gauge for their own movements.
(2) They will lock onto the target just as a 4 legged predator will on his own prey.
(3) Their location of confrontation will be selected to limit the prey’s options.
(4) They will be breath-taking in their effrontery and will ignore social convention.
(a) Social convention requires that when you approach a stranger, especially in a more or less secluded place, you make sure they are aware of your approach.
(b) You move slowly, making noise and keeping a respectful distance.
(c) You do not occlude their path of travel.
(d) You get your hands out, palms visible.
(e) VCA intent on confrontation ignore most if not all of these conventions in their approach.

(5) VCA will try to get within your reaction response time frame.
(a) They will either use the “swoop” method.
(b) Or, if they can get within arms reach they will try to extend your reaction response time by engaging in forward behavior to condition you to it so they can have more time when they actually initiate.

(6) VCA have a life-time of reading others responses to anxiety filled and mixed signal situations.
(7) They know how to read people and get them to set aside their interpretation of danger signals.

d) Practitioner Strategy

i) Remember this is probably just business to him.
ii) He will be emboldened, through experience, by anxiety, hesitation and arrogance.
iii) He may well be looking for a reason to transition to an expressive response.
iv) This is made more likely if he has an audience of cohorts.
v) Unless obviated by the circumstance, he will likely be amenable to forming restraining judgments.
vi) With the exception of the police community, there is no legitimate purpose in surrounding a stranger or arranging companions in a fashion so as to control their movements.
vii) If confronted by such behavior you should regard it as hostile intent.
viii) If possible, remain calm, polite, direct and do not obviously lie to the VCA, giving him an excuse to transition to Expressive Motivation.

SUMMARY

21) Understanding VCA Strategy Will Help You Apply the Most Useful Tactical Technique.

a) Instrumental and Instrumental/Expressive VCA

i) Have a lifetime of experience preparing to use you against you.
ii) They can be amenable to forming restraining judgments based on your interactive interaction with them.
iii) You should have techniques in your repertoire of techniques to deal with
(1) Anticipatory reaction time incidents.
(2) Real-time reaction time incidents.

b) Expressive Motive VCA

i) Are usually experienced with weapons.
ii) Have good quality and well maintained weapons at the incident.
iii) Are not usually amenable to forming restraining judgments based on your interaction with them.
iv) You will need Active Incident skills in such incidents.

Last edited by Dozdoats; 11-25-2013 at 12:26 PM.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Disobey the "law" or possibly die....not a tough choice for me. As stated earlier, stay out of the hood and make your situational awareness top priority everywhere you go. Let the clueless pay the price.

As the saying goes: " I'd rather be judged by 12, than carried by 6".

"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do once a plan fails!"

Note: Born and raised in Chicago, the author received his Ph.D. in social and industrial psychology from the University of Illinois in 1972. He is a professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society. His research focuses on processes of human judgment and decision-making, both theoretical and applied. A student of self-defense since 1997, he has made up for lost time by training with a number of exceptional instructors, none of whom bears any responsibility for deficiencies in his performance. He is an active competitor and safety officer in IDPA, a charter member of the Polite Society, and an NTI participant since 2001.

Thanks to Drs. Larry James and Martin Topper for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Responsibility for any errors rests entirely with the author.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble.
It’s what you know that just ain’t so.”
Artimus Ward

The Nature of Situation Awareness

“Situation awareness” (SA) is taught, researched, and debated in every field of human activity that involves risk: aviation, combat, medicine, hazardous systems operation, law enforcement—and self-defense (see, e.g. Endsley, 1995; Endsley & Bolstad, 1994; Endsley & Kiris, 1995; Gonzalez, 2004; Marsh, 2000). It has been defined in detail (“…the perception of the elements in [one’s] environment, within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projecting of their status in the near future.” Endsley, 1995, p. 36, emphasis added.) It has also been defined simply (“…paying attention to your surroundings…” Gonzalez, 2004). However, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has applied research-based knowledge to the self-defense problems of ordinary citizens. Neither has anyone tried to link more recent research on “intuitive awareness” with SA research and practice in anything but a casual way. The use (or non-use) of intuition, defined as “thoughts and preferences that come to mind quickly and without much reflection” or “gut responses” is of major interest to law enforcement (National Institute of Justice, 2004), public safety (Klein, 1998), and medicine (King & Appleton, 1997.) Discussion of intuitive factors in self-defense, however, has been largely anecdotal (e.g. deBecker, 1997). Specifically absent has been any consideration of how to train or practice “intuition,” as separate from consciously processed lists of danger signals, for instance discussion of Cooper’s “color codes” (e.g. Givens, undated a & b). While informative, they do not tell us how to acquire or use information that may come to us, and be signaled by, processes that are nonconscious, unintentional, nonverbal, relatively effortless, fast, and that operate in parallel with conscious awareness (see, e.g., Bargh, 1994). While often labeled “instinctive,” these automatic responses are most certainly learned.

For the present, I will adopt Endsley’s (1995) definition, which supports the point that “awareness” is about understanding in the service of effective action. I assume an intimate and dynamic connection between awareness, goals, and action. Though my primary focus is on attention and comprehension, this assumption should be kept in mind. (Martin Topper, personal communication.) I also make another useful assumption: that the distinction between SA as a conscious, controlled, volitional, effortful process and “intuition” as discussed above is more apparent than real and that in fact both stem from the same sources, operating in complementary ways. This perspective, which both contrasts and unifies “controlled” and “automatic” (intuitive or implicit) processing, is fundamental to many areas of modern psychology (see Bargh, 1994; Feldman Barrett, Tugade, & Engle, 2004; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2002[1]).

Adopting this perspective highlights the idea that awareness need not be conscious, and indeed the capability for consciousness is not a prerequisite either for SA or for effective action. Anyone observing predators and prey (whether, say, zebras and lions or squirrels and housecats) can testify to the high level of awareness any creature must have in order to survive for any length of time. Regardless of sensory adaptation or neurological readiness, learning plays a critical role in its development. Conscious SA may provide detailed information (“There’s a man wearing a jacket standing near my car, and it’s 2 a.m. in Miami on August 10.”) Intuitive SA may provide only a feeling of apprehension, directing one’s conscious attention (see Givens, undated a & b). However, both are based on knowledge, whose structure and accessibility are crucial to its usefulness.

The Sources of Situation Awareness

There is no such thing as “awareness” in the absence of knowledge. That is, SA depends on a “mental model” (Endsley, 2000) of situations and people, a model which may or may not be fully correct. Implicit responses likewise depend on knowledge; even if that “knowledge” cannot be verbalized, it is no less systematic and no less real. It may have been learned unconsciously, or before one had language with which to express it (see, for instance, Frensch & Runger, 2003; Katkin, Wiens, and Oman, 2001), but it functions as knowledge nevertheless. Awareness is awareness of something, and what that “thing” is depends on our knowledge of the world. If our knowledge is objectively incorrect, (as in “someone so nice couldn’t be a rapist,” c.f. deBecker, 1997), our “awareness” is, too, but it is no less subjectively real.

If SA depends on either explicit or implicit knowledge, it stands to reason that the amount and structure of that knowledge matters—and it does. Expertise in any area consists of a vast amount of specific information, organized and interrelated around general principles. This is what lets the expert marksman automatically adjust the point of aim when shooting up- or downhill, without consciously reviewing the principles governing the bullet’s trajectory, while the novice is trying to remember a rule. It is what lets the chess grandmaster perceive, not analyze, patterns on the chessboard, and quickly project moves and countermoves. The very same processes allow rapid, decisive action in life-or-death situations (see, e.g., Klein, 1998) whether or not one is consciously aware of the source of one’s intuitive feeling of apprehension. In fact, it is not even necessary for emotional responses to be consciously experienced for them to influence judgments and behavior (Winkielman & Berrige, 2004). Sometimes we don’t “know” (consciously) what we know.

It is also necessary to point out, though, that “knowing,” whether conscious or not, whether emotional or verbal, is much more variable and context-dependent than it seems to be. The patterns of association that govern our interpretations of, and emotional responses to, the world can influence us to a greater or lesser degree, depending on “accessibility,” the degree to which a concept is likely to be activated and used. Accessibility, in turn, depends on a number of factors: Expertise, already discussed, involves a great deal of elaborated knowledge and considerable emotional investment. It produces high, and chronic, accessibility of relevant concepts. Ideology and value systems act likewise, with perhaps greater emotional investment. Operative motives like hunger, fear, affection, or achievement, when active, render concepts associated with them more accessible, and if the motive is chronic, the concept’s accessibility is too. Recent use of a concept (for example “danger,” caused by reading a news story about terrorism or robbery) makes it temporarily accessible, and experiencing any emotional state also makes emotionally compatible concepts temporarily accessible.

Why does this matter? Because if and when one encounters a situation that offers multiple cues as to its meaning and consequences, those that are relevant to (“diagnostic of “) our accessible concepts tend to be noticed more easily, and the situation tends to be interpreted in terms of that concept rather than another, perhaps equally valid, one. In other words, we experience the world (at least in part) in terms of that which we are ready to experience. This process is not deliberate, not open to consciousness, is controllable only with deliberate effort, and sometimes not then (for a general review, see Bargh, 1994). It happens with respect to our knowledge and our prejudices, positive or negative, alike (See, for instance, Amodio, et al., 2004; Blair, 2002; Levy, Stark, & Squire, 2004). Our “situational awareness,” then, whether implicit or explicit, depends on knowledge, values, current motives, emotional states, arousal, recent experiences, expectations, fatigue and other physical factors, and many other variables.

It is definitely true that strong signals from the environment, cues that stand out sharply from the background, can draw attention, activate motives and knowledge, thereby directing perception. However, one can miss even very prominent and unusual events happening before one’s eyes when active goals lead attention to be fixed elsewhere. Imagine paying close attention to a video of people playing with a basketball and being told later that a gorilla walked among the players—a gorilla you didn’t see. It sounds impossible, but it has happened in more than one experiment. Imagine talking to someone on the street, being momentarily distracted, and then resuming the conversation, not noticing that you’re now talking to a different person. That has happened, too. (Mack, 2003; Simon & Chabris, 1999). The first is called “inattentional blindness,” the second, “change blindness.” The good news, though, is that even without awareness of specifics, implicit processes can signal us—if we are sensitive enough to notice them (Rensink, 2004).

Situation Awareness and the Armed Citizen

Having some understanding of the nature and origin of situation awareness, we now turn to understanding its role in self-defense. Conscious SA is studied in contexts like aviation safety and military operations; intuitive or implicit SA is only beginning to be studied in domains such as medicine and law enforcement. There has been no research in the area of self-defense for the ordinary citizen. How, then, are we to evaluate and apply the knowledge we have, let alone acquire new information? We need to start by understanding the differences between the professional’s situation and the layperson’s or citizen’s. Briefly put, the professional’s job requires and encourages attention to a limited part of the environment. The job of police officer, soldier, pilot, firefighter, power plant operator, doctor, nurse, and so forth, exists to take a limited set of actions with respect to a limited set of people and conditions. Any other actions or concerns—listening to a sporting event, arguing with a partner, worrying about the mortgage—are at least officially out of bounds, regardless of how often they happen in real life. The fact that mistakes occur—aircraft land on the wrong runway, soldiers get caught in an ambush, the wrong medicine is given—is evidence that even under the best of circumstances SA can be imperfect.

The ordinary person concerned with self-defense has a job that is easier than the professional’s in some ways and harder in others. It is easier because, except in truly dire circumstances, people are not required to seek out danger, or carry out missions regardless of danger. The police officer, soldier, and firefighter ultimately exist in order to confront and contain danger. The medical professional, though not often at personal risk, exists to intervene in situations that threaten others’ lives or well-being.

The typical armed citizen or layperson, in contrast, has little to do with danger on a daily basis and is rarely, if ever, threatened (except perhaps in traffic). Most can order their lives to minimize their exposure, and the likelihood of their need for awareness of threat is correspondingly less. Furthermore, the layperson’s first option is to avoid rather than face threats. That’s how their job is easier. It is more difficult because, when danger is present, their knowledge is less accessible, their skills are likely to be less practiced, and (at least compared to police, military, and firefighters) their allowable actions are more restricted. Also unlike the professional “on the job,” the layperson’s attention is directed to a range of tasks—getting the groceries, making the sale, writing the article—and these motives and their associated concepts render the knowledge necessary for SA relatively less accessible. Being mindful of one’s surroundings takes additional effort and skill, beyond that required for one’s daily life. For the professional, that is one’s daily life. Furthermore, unlike many professionals (e.g. soldiers and firefighters), the armed citizen is likely to be alone, or at least be the only person with any training, when facing possible danger. In short, the layperson is less likely to need awareness of threat on a day-to-day basis, but when it is necessary, he or she must rely on less accessible knowledge, on less practiced skills, and must create a response from among fewer options.

Some might argue that awareness skills are already in place, at least for most people. After all, don’t we drive in heavy traffic and avoid accidents regularly? Doesn’t this require observation and inference, both conscious and intuitive? Yes, but that is largely irrelevant. One, in traffic the vast majority just want to get to their destinations. They may be careless, unskilled, intoxicated, or reckless, but they’re not after you. Second, regardless of how good a driver you are, the domain of knowledge is different, and we know that expertise doesn’t transfer well (see, for example, Bedard and Chi, 1992). For example, I’ve been riding motorcycles for 41 years. I’ve raced, toured, commuted and cruised, in circumstances ranging from Florida swamps to Chicago rush hours, in all seasons and all weather. When my helmet goes on, so does my “race face,” and I move up and down the color code from yellow to orange to red and back several times a trip. I find myself noticing drivers about to do something potentially dangerous without knowing why I did, and likewise know when there are likely to be hazards like gravel or wet leaves on the road. Yes, I make mistakes when tired or distracted, though probably fewer than the average person. Nevertheless, when walking around in Atlanta, or on the Georgia Tech campus, I frequently find myself in Condition White despite my best intentions (and the efforts of those who’ve trained me). I’ll be in a hallway, for instance, and someone will pass me from behind, someone I didn’t know was there. Maybe it’s just me—there are individual differences in SA (Endsley & Bolstad, 1994)—but there’s likewise substantial data on the limits of expertise that it makes no sense to ignore.

What to Train?

SA training, like any other, requires us to establish both general and specific training objectives. Our general objective should be to increase two types of correct actions, and reduce two types of mistakes. We want to increase, first, true positives; that is, to detect danger when it exists. Klein (1998) gives a vivid account of how a firefighter’s intuitive misgivings led him to evacuate a seemingly ordinary house fire just before the floor collapsed. Pinizzotto, Davis, and Miller (2004) provide a similar example, a police officer’s timely identification of an armed suspect during a drug raid. Next, we want to increase true negatives; that is, dismiss a potential source of danger when it is, in fact, harmless. Givens (undated b) discusses returning to condition yellow after checking a potential danger. There are no dramatic examples of true negatives, but they are just as important to accurate SA.

Two types of mistakes require attention because of their huge potential cost. First, the false positive identifies danger where none is present. Ayoob (2000) provides a compelling account of one such mistake, the tragic shooting of Amadou Diallo. Experienced New York City police officers’ training, motives, expectations, and emotional state combined with Diallo’s own actions and the marginal environment to produce a needless death that none intended or imagined could happen.

The second type of mistake, the false negative, is the perception of safety where danger exists. Just as tragic as Diallo’s death, though not as well publicized, is the murder of Captain Robbie Bishop of Carrollton County, GA. Captain Bishop, an experienced officer and expert in drug interdiction, was shot to death in his patrol car as he wrote a routine traffic citation (www.copsite.com/lwf/lwf99disjon.html;www.ncea314.com/robbiebishop.asp). Though we can never know what led Captain Bishop to miss the danger signals his murderer gave, we must realize that any of us are capable of the same mistake.

Preventing mistakes like these might seem require contradictory courses of action: training both slower, more thoughtful responses (to avoid false positives) or faster, more aggressive responses (to avoid false negatives). Both are wrong. Simply put, at a given level of information, any change in response threshold (the “mental trigger” that governs action) to reduce one type of mistake will inevitably increase the other. Any change made to increase the percent of true positives will also increase the percent of false positives, and if one acts to increase the rate of true negatives, false negatives will increase as well. Given any level of error or uncertainty in our information, this must be true, simply by the laws of probability.

There are only two ways to reduce the rate of both types of mistakes while increasing that of both types of correct decisions: to have information that is more accurate and to use the information at hand better. These goals are the general objectives of training. The most efficient way to accomplish them is to find people who are already excellent at gathering and using information, discover what they know, how they know it, how it is organized, and how it is used, and teach those things to others. At the same time, research and further experience can increase our knowledge and the effectiveness of our training. While it may not be possible to make an expert of every trainee, we can certainly raise the average and, as in sports, raise the level of peak performance as well.

Specific Objectives

A great many people have provided lists of potential danger signals, and it would be redundant to repeat them here. One thing we don’t know is whether these signals—the coat in warm weather, the stranger who watches you or avoids your eyes, and so forth—are the only useful ones. These are simply the ones that experts can consciously articulate.

We also don’t know for sure what the expert notices about the environment, beyond the important but obvious features: the location of exits, the arrangement of tables in a restaurant, the location of cover and concealment, the position of other patrons in a store, etc. Sometimes, in fact, even these “obvious” features are unnoticed when we are preoccupied. Therefore, the first thing we need to know is how the expert scans the environment and how that information is organized and interpreted. Beyond visuals, we need to know what is heard, felt, smelled, tasted—even if the expert him- or herself can’t really tell us. In short, we need research. Some studies can use simulations, with equipment that tracks eye movements and records scanning patterns of scenes presented on a video monitor. These can be coupled with verbal probes. Such studies are now beginning (Force Science News, 2004). More elaborate studies might employ volunteers wearing glasses containing video cameras, so that areas attracting attention as the person goes about their daily life can be recorded and analyzed. GPS devices can track a person’s movement through environments such as shopping malls. In each case, experts’ and non-experts’ patterns of attention, movement, and reports of observations can be compared. Probably the simplest and cheapest method is what we currently do informally: interview people. We typically only interview after some incident, but I suggest that we also interview more and less expert observers during and after routine days, with questions designed to capture not only conscious observations but also feelings and intuitive signals. Most importantly, we should employ multiple methods, since each has strengths that complement another’s drawbacks (see, for instance, Ericsson, 2002).

We should treat the information thus gained as tentative, as hypotheses rather than facts. If, say, we find a particular pattern of scanning or movement to be characteristic of experts, its effectiveness can be tested in training studies and simulations.

Waiting for research to provide all the answers, though, is unnecessary and counterproductive. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Our knowledge may not be perfect, but it will never be. With our present technology and experience, we can train not only attention to known danger signals, but also the elaborated situational models that support both conscious and implicit awareness as well as action. As we gain knowledge, we can incorporate it into ongoing training.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

We can also train observational skills. Although these are not independent of specific knowledge and situational models, each can reinforce the others. Scanning, listening, awareness of change, and especially attention to implicit responses—“feelings”-- will add a dimension now missing from most training.

We can also train motivation towards two goals: to attend to one’s environment, and to practice the skills necessary to awareness. While those who choose to arm themselves are already “motivated,” the specific motive to attend to one’s environment must compete with others, even motives as mundane as remembering to pick up a gallon of milk, or to get the car’s oil changed. Likewise, the motive to improve one’s skills at observation, inference, and intuition must compete with other ordinary motives on a moment-to-moment basis, and compete long-term for our limited attention, time, and energy.

We also need to train immediate action skills. In one sense, these are the focus of most of our current training in armed or unarmed combat. But all of these presuppose that we have identified a real danger. What if we are uncertain? It’s apparent that there are real individual differences in the skills that gain us the distance and time to make better judgments; they emerge reliably in simulations and assessments like the ATSA Village scenarios, but if they have been systematized anywhere, I’m not aware of it. Once again, expert reports and careful observation might be valuable.

How to Train

Before considering training techniques, we need to establish measures of performance. Without reliable and valid feedback, effective learning doesn’t happen. Without useful measures of awareness, we are unable to evaluate the effectiveness of training. At present, there are two types of measures: individual knowledge of situations, assessed by direct questioning during or after simulations (Endsley, Sollenberger, & Stein, 2000; Jones & Endsley, 2000; Matthews, Pleban, Endsley, & Strater, 2000) and performance scores on tasks that require situational knowledge (Pritchett, Hausman, & Johnson, 1996). The latter are likewise measured via simulations. Both types are limited. Questioning does not assess the connection of knowledge to action, and is limited to the contents of awareness. If not properly conducted, questioning itself may bias the results (see Ericsson, 2002). Performance measures, unless very carefully designed, do not provide specific knowledge of the timing and content of awareness, though they reflect both implicit and explicit processes. Fortunately, the two methods are complementary. Both can and should be used.

Situational Models and Danger Signals

These need to be discussed together, because signals are only meaningful as parts of a cognitive model. Without an elaborated model, a list of signals is no more meaningful or easy to use than a laundry list. If our goal is to create expert-level models to guide perception and response, we need to do it the same way other kinds of expertise are created: deliberate, guided practice (Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993). But at what tasks?

I suggest that we can incorporate the desired skills into a number of tasks. First, the technology of first-person video games can be adapted to present realistic scenarios based on existing and future knowledge. For example, we know that behavior such as voice tone and posture can communicate intention and emotional state (see de Gelder, et al., 2004, for a recent example.) There is no reason why subtle signals of danger or safety, once discovered, can’t be represented in video games as well as they are in movies. They should include active response options, to build connections between SA and multiple options for action. The chess master’s perception of a position automatically calls up sets of effective moves and countermoves, and this automaticity additionally provides the capacity needed to create new options. The novice, meanwhile, is searching memory or “dithering,” trying to make a choice. Our training should aim at producing the master’s kind of skill. These games have the advantage of being usable at home, easily upgraded, adaptable to any skill level and relatively inexpensive. While they lack important elements of realism (physical movement, for instance) they are certainly no worse than other training simulations. They can be programmed to probe for knowledge at random intervals and to provide detailed performance feedback.

We can incorporate realistic awareness training into recreational activities such as IDPA competition. Right now IDPA tests marksmanship, movement, and gun-handling skills, but there is no reason why we can’t build threat identification and avoidance into scenarios. I’ve been impressed, for instance, by the creativity of a number of friends who devised inexpensive moving targets and “pop-out” threat cues. My local Polite Society group has made efforts along these lines, too, and of course, it’s a central theme of the NTI.

More elaborate training facilities offer “shoot-houses” of varying levels of complexity. Every year, entrepreneurs offer visits to Halloween “haunted houses” starting about October 1, and firms exist that will set them up in any warehouse or other space. It seems to me an easy step to combine these creations, using airsoft training weapons if the use of live-fire or simunitions weapons is not feasible. While obviously too elaborate and costly for everyday use, they could be employed to teach both awareness and response skills, with immediate feedback.

As digital video recording becomes less expensive, this technology can also be incorporated into training. Having a visual reference for feedback and review (e.g. “See how you walked past that doorway?”) could be very helpful in correcting mistakes and in planning more effective actions.

Mental rehearsal is another valuable practice routine. Widely used in sports training and in a variety of therapies, (see, e.g., Dunn, 2001; Swets & Bjork, 1990), visualization and mental rehearsal skills can be easily learned and practiced almost anywhere. Combined with video and text materials, and guided by formal instruction, visualization and rehearsal can help integrate and elaborate one’s mental models of situations, habits of observation, and patterns of response. A technique suggested by several trainers is to read crime reports in the local newspaper and visualize one’s response to the situation. We can easily expand this to visualizing and rehearsing scanning patterns and behavioral signals that trigger effective action.

Feedback is necessary for practice to build skill. I suggest applying awareness skills consciously, as we go through our daily routines. We can test ourselves by recording, for example, how many times per day we have to suddenly stop because someone we didn’t notice came out of a doorway or around a corner, or at lunch by trying to remember the location of exits in our restaurant.

Motivation for Awareness

It might seem silly to say that one needs to learn the motivation to be aware of one’s surroundings, especially to NTI participants. We know, however, that motives must be active to guide perception and action, and that motives compete for our limited attentional capacity (see, e.g., Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994; Feldman Barrett, Tugade, & Engle, 2004). In order to influence our awareness reliably, then, the motive to be aware needs chronic activation.

Motives arise because classes of actions are consistently associated with pleasurable outcomes, or the avoidance of painful ones. Effective soldiers, firefighters, and police officers maintain awareness for two simple reasons: they may die if they don’t, and their partners, teammates and buddies both support and depend on them.

Supporters, though, rarely surround armed citizens—in fact, we’re likely to be dismissed as “paranoid”—and the presence of danger is far less frequent and obtrusive. That means that, most of the time, each person has to reward him- or herself. We can set up self-reward schedules based on our self-evaluated performance and alertness, as discussed above. It may be a feeling of accomplishment we allow ourselves to have, an extra helping of dessert, a cigar after dinner, or $5 towards something we want to buy—the trick is to develop a consistent habit of thought and action around awareness.

We can build positive reinforcement into our group practices and competitions as well. People are social creatures, and receiving approval and status for an activity is a powerful incentive as well as a way to make the activity itself rewarding. When awareness tests are included in competition scenarios, and we create a social norm of mutual encouragement and reinforcement, we’ve taken an important step in creating a chronically active motive.

Motivation to Train

Ericsson, et al. (1993) and Ericsson and Charness (1994) find that many years of dedicated practice are necessary to achieve world-class expertise in any field. Furthermore, they note that most people do not deliberately practice after attaining minimal skill at some activity; they play for fun, not for keeps. How do experts discipline themselves to attain peak performance? Is this level of dedication necessary to our goals?

Fortunately, the answer to second question is “no.” What’s necessary is to be better, and to seek continual improvement. While it’s true that in life-threatening situations there is no such thing as “good enough,” it’s also true that we all have other areas of our lives that are as or more important on a daily basis. The crucial goal is to make improving awareness an integral part of daily activities, not something that unduly interferes with them.

If training is a source of frustration and anxiety, it’s not going to be done, and will undermine awareness motives as well. The trick to maintaining “motivation control” and “emotion control’ (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1995) lies in knowing how to set goals, what goals to set, and how to react to them.

We know that setting difficult, specific goals improves performance on well-learned tasks and inhibits learning at early stages. Self-focused attention and negative emotion seem to be the culprits in the latter. That suggests avoiding specific goals early in training, instead adopting a “mastery” orientation—that is, focusing on improvement, regardless of the rate. This needs to be combined with self-reinforcement for any improvement, however small, and periods of reflection on task strategies. That is, regard feedback as information, rather than as evaluation, and use it to explore various means of improving performance. As skill builds, specific goals can be adopted, keeping the “mastery’ approach. The logic is that there is no pre-set upper limit to performance, no “good enough” point, but that improvement is its own reward.

Directing attention to the task rather than the self is only half the story, though. A learning process necessarily creates mistakes, and for at least some people mistakes create negative emotions that can not only interfere with learning but also lead to withdrawal. Some people become anxious at the thought of doing any activity at which they may fail, with similar results. Teaching emotion management skills can increase performance and allow the activity itself to become enjoyable. A variety of techniques, such as controlled relaxation combined with visualization, can short-circuit anxiety. “Positive self-talk” is a way of making emotionally positive ideas and concepts accessible in stressful situations. These, combined with rehearsal and visualization of skills, can enhance skill and motivation simultaneously.

Conclusion

This paper has not been nearly so much about answers as questions; How should we regard “situation awareness”? How is our knowledge of the world organized, and how might we use that organization to our advantage? What do experts know that the rest of us don’t? How can we capture that knowledge, and transfer it efficiently? The theories, data, and methods discussed here represent (in my opinion) our best current answers to those questions, but if science teaches us anything it’s that the questions count more than the answers, and that we make progress by learning to ask different questions. Experience teaches us that some of the most productive questions come from observations of the world, especially observations of the solutions people find to the daily problems they face. I hope that this paper stimulates people to explore, ponder, discuss, and evaluate in practice the ideas summarized here, and that the process proves to be of benefit even if some or all of the ideas are wrong. This will take time and effort. That shouldn’t be discouraging. As engineers say about any kind of project or product:

National Institute of Justice (2004). Nature and influence of intuition in law enforcement: Theory and practice. Introduction to conference notes, June 22-23, 2004, Marymount University, Arlington, VA.

[1] There are some statements in Slovic, et al. with which readers will disagree violently. I do, too. However, these do not affect the validity of their arguments.

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arises not from deficits in the Constitution or Confederation , nor from want of honor and virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -- John Adams
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." -- Lord Acton

Grossman has some worthwhile things to say about mindset and psychology. But most of his audience are what he himself describes as "sheepdogs." That is, cops and soldiers.

Are you a cop?

Are you a soldier?

Do you run around describing yourself as "a warrior?"

If so, fine - listen to Grossman.

But if you are plain old Joe Schmuck citizen (no, NOT "civilian") - what does Grossman have to say to you that's worthwhile? Some good advice about the psychological effects of exposing your kids to violence, perhaps, yes.

But beyond that, down in the weeds, there's not much in Grossman's material that's put out there for us ordinary folks, the sheep. Just the "sheepdogs."

I'm not one who cares for that whole allegorical shepherd/sheep/sheepdog/wolves structure myself. Why?

Because sheepdogs help shepherds control sheep so they can be exploited. Why is being exploited by a shepherd any better for the sheep than being exploited by wolves?

What I personally am interested in is SHEEP WITH FANGS.

Take it however you want it, otherwise..
======================================

Others have told me that I am wrong, to my face and on youtube videos. Personally I think that LTC Grossman is very correct in his descriptions of the physiological reactions to violence. However, none of that is anything new or radical. People have understood for years the "fight/flight/freeze/submit" physiological responses from watery guts to reduced blood flow through the limbs, etc. If you read Grossman to find out how your body will react to a violent encounter ahead of time I think you will come away with a better understanding of what your body will go through, even if the violent encounter ends with no actual violence.

Where Dave Grossman is wrong is in his statistical analysis of data. His claims that violent video games turn gamers into Delta Force badasses is purely laughable. Now someone who does have some data has started chipping away at the "most soldiers don't fire their guns" bullshit that Grossman picked up from S.L.A. Marshall. http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/...-engen-eng.asp

When a military historian starts picking apart a psychologists shoddy analysis, put your money on the historian.

Gentlemen and Ladies, if you want to be a better fighter, you need to go out an actually train. If you can't train yourself by all means pick up a class from John Mosby http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/ or Max Velocity http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/. I had to sign away years of my life to get my training, a few hundred bucks and some time sleeping on the dirt is a damn good bargain in comparison.

Now, is everything about "killology" BS? No. But if you've been in a fistfight you have pretty damn good idea how your body will react after a gunfight. A fight is a fight, and only the weapons change. The more intense the fight, the more intense your reactions will be. Simple as that, your body doesn't have a different stress response for war as for a fistfight. The only difference will be intensity.

Now I think Dave Grossman will come to be remembered along the same lines as Sigmund Freud, wrong about so much, but still an important figure in the early stages of a discipline. But when you think about all the harm that Freud caused when his ideas were widespread across Western culture, maybe he should occupy the same place in our memories as Karl Marx, another pioneer in a field who was wrong about nearly everything.

Well... No disrespect but what you said kind of proves my point.

I won't go into what I've done/did for a living other than say that I don't "run around describing myself as a warrior". I live a certain lifestyle to a certain set of standards... Others may label me if they want but I don't do it.

You say what you are interested in is "Sheep with fangs" but strip away the fangs and what do you have?

Sheep... Victims...

The same goes for someone who does all this training in a controlled environment and they are set free in the real world. They are woefully unprepared and strip away the "training" and they are not adequately prepared for the real thing. These people are more dangerous than straight sheep because they have an overinflated sense of themselves and will react in a wrong way.

And to compare punching someone in the nose and breaking it ( yes, there will be a vast amount of blood ) to pulling a trigger and watching someone's head evaporate in a red mist of blood, brains, and bone fragments, then watching him in a perceived slow-motion collapse to the ground...Ummm.... No... You do NOT react the same.

There is a reason that nations have spent trillions of dollars to allow their armies to kill from a distance. Killing up close is very, very personal and is a very, very hard thing to do.

According to the army's own studys 90-85% of the soldiers in WWII could not pull the trigger when they were in a firefight. Why is that? After all, they were "sheep with fangs" were they not?

In the Gulf War the figure had risen to 95%.

The reason was the cultivation of the mind through training the soldier to kill people. The armies had move to weapons with longer ranges to depersonalize killing and had move from paper targets with "bullseyes" to computer simulations that showed the soldier what to expect when he shot someone in the head.

Killing is in no way, shape, or form the same as a fistfight.

Grossman trains the one most important weapon we can cultivate. The mind. I hope everyone here can make that distinction...

Ephesians 5:11 - " Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ”

Deo adjuvante non timendum - With God Helping, Nothing is to be Feared

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